What Do We Owe The Things We Inherit? | Ken Woodward #107
Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions!Show Notes
"The dead don't get a vote, so the living write their lines for them, and the person writing the line is usually the same person who needs the money." - Ken Woodward
Mom handed me a plastic baggie with a ring and a note card. When she was twelve, her dying step-grandfather let her pick something from his shaving bag, and she chose his first wedding ring. Years later, a jeweler told her the ruby wasn’t real. Three weeks after Mom gave it to me, I gave it to my daughter.
This episode asks where I find value, and who gets to decide. I revisit my conversation with Rob Walker from episode 61 and his Significant Objects experiment, where invented stories turned thrift-store finds into collectibles.
Anil Seth’s work on perception helps me ask what changes when something isn’t what I believed, and what doesn’t.
Then I turn the questions on myself: my great-grandfather’s gold-tipped walking stick that I hold but don’t own, Jerry Colonna’s question about complicity, and what I’m willing to ask of the next generation.
This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com.
Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?))
Keep questioning!
More from Curated Questions: Conversations Celebrating the Power of Questions!
"I sat there with them and realized I had no story to trade. Not a faded one. None." - Ken Woodward With the election less than two weeks away, I caught myself asking how those knuckleheads could vote that way. Underneath it: I would never do that if I were them. It starts with an observation from Jason Pargin about a particular question that is often misinterpreted and a couple others that sound alike. What would you do? What would you do in my shoes? What would you do if you were me? I tell the story of my turn from straight-ticket Republican to bright blue, and the six months in 2016 when new friendships showed me how little I understood about lives I thought resembled mine. Drawing on Melissa Harris-Perry’s Sister Citizen, Thomas Nagel’s idea of moral luck, and research on deep canvassing, I ask how much credit I can take for changing, and what I owe the people who pay for a vote. It closes with sonder and a question: What don’t I know about the life behind this choice? This Curated Questions episode can be found on all major platforms and at CuratedQuestions.com. Be sure to subscribe to the weekly Curated Questions Dispatch newsletter for more fun with questions and curiosity! (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions (https://substack.com/@curatedquestions?)) Keep questioning!
"A statement claims to be finished, and that claim is exactly what time comes back to audit. A question never claimed to be finished." - Ken Woodward
" Real curiosity, untethered, unsoftened, it's a pretty intense tool. And I think the kids haven't blunted the weapon by politeness or by fear of looking dumb or by the belief that there are certain things we should know. It's still sharp." - Lulu Miller
"What do former members say about the organization?" - Ken Woodward
"Disagreement makes the map visible. Agreement lets it pass for the terrain." - Ken Woodward